A.M. Three Strikes: Professor by day, biker-gang leader by night

LEADING OFF: Ah, college. Classes on the quad. Pizza-fueled all-nighters. And, at least at Cal State San Bernardino, according to The Los Angeles Times, professors who double as meth-dealing biker-gang leaders. Authorities in San Bernardino have charged a professor of kinesiology with allegedly distributing methamphetamine across the region as the leader of the Devils Diciples motorcycle gang. (And, yes, the professor’s gang intentionally mis-spells its name.) The San Bernardino County Sun notes that the scholar is currently a fugitive and may have fled the country, following the investigation authorities dubbed “Devil’s Professor.” (If you’re wondering, the professor has not posted his whereabouts on his Twitter page, which largely consists of messages apparently informing his students that he’s going to be late for class.) Meanwhile the president of CSUSB issued a statement saying, with an academic’s stiff upper lip, that the charging of one of his faculty members, “is beyond disappointing.” The Diciples, on their website, say they, “are really free thinkers who enjoy our freedom above all else and do not necessarily march to the same drums as others.” (As a side note, what’s up with biker gang names? Hell’s Angels. Devil’s Diciples. Earlier this month, we had Wheels of Soul. ATF agents last month searched the home of the local boss of the Hell’s Lovers. It’s almost like there is a biker gang-name generator. Oh, wait, there is.)

STRIKE 1: In The Denver Post this morning, Jessica Fender takes an accounting of Gerry Whitman’s tenure as Denver police chief, finding plenty of people who defend his record even as the city looks to replace him. Meanwhile, Sara Burnett attended the sentencing hearing for Steamboat Springs developer Brooks Kellogg, who got six years in the federal pokey for trying to hire somebody to kill a former business partner.

STRIKE 2:The Boulder Daily Camera tells us this morning that matters of marijuana policy are keeping City Council members there busy, with the council expected to take up an ordinance that would restrict how dispensaries can advertise so as to keep the medical focus in medical marijuana, while also working on a resolution to clarify that, if the federal government ever starts prosecuting city employees for being involved in medical-marijuana regulation, the city would defend them. In the high country, The Aspen Times reports that a former police officer who Tasered a homeless woman, was fired and then sued the city claiming gender bias and retaliation has gotten a $28,000 settlement in the case, a far cry from the nearly half million dollars she was aiming for.

STRIKE 3: The saga of the stolen Rembrandt that was quickly, and mysteriously, returned and that might not be a Rembrandy anyway just keeps taking more turns. Now, The Los Angeles Times reports that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office is refusing to return the drawing to the art gallery that owns it, saying that questions over its authenticity and over whether the Linearis Institute actually owns the thing need to be settled first. The New York Times reports that the federal government is planning to sue more than a dozen big banks that sold mortgage securities during the housing bubble, alleging that the banks misrepresented how good of a bet they were. And, lastly today, we take you across the Atlantic, where the Lee Grace Dougherty of fugitive German cows has come in from the cold, according to the Associated Press. As NPR tells us, Yvonne’s life on the lam began when she escaped a pen where she was destined for slaughter, then things turned into “The Fugitive” when she nearly ran into a police cruiser and the cops responded by issuing a shoot-to-kill order, which made her the folk hero outlaw cow of Bavaria and caused all sorts of people to do all sorts of crazy things to try to catch her — including one ploy that involved what the German magazine Der Spiegel described as the “George Clooney of cattle” — none of which were successful until the local authorities finally granted Yvonne clemency and she turned up at a farm. An animal sanctuary has agreed to take her in.

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